Intercom Survey Results

In 2007, STC conducted a member survey of its publications. I've listed some interesting data that I believe relates to the Intercom magazine app I'm prototyping for the iPhone:

Three-fourths of subscribers save Intercom and refer back to it.
Pass along: typically, 2.1 people read the copy delivered.

Level of interest in the following electronic enhancements to articles or online formats (first number=extremely interested, second number=interested):
Online chats and forums about articles 5%, 20%
Online chats with authors 3%, 16%
Blogs related to features or other content 8%, 22%
Podcasts of articles 7%, 15%
Online additional content related to articles 16%, 41%
RSS Feeds 10%, 18%

Survey respondents rarely go online to read/search for article in Intercom.

Preferred access online:
PDFs 32%
HTML 16%
Digital version 21%
Combination of PDF and HTML 26%

Q: If there were no difference in the cost for members to receive the online version and/or the print version, which version would you prefer for Intercom?
Online only 24%
Print only 24%
Both print and online 51%
Don’t want it 2%

I bet if we conducted this survey again today, there would be some variation in the results due to the technologies that are now available and more widely used. It would be really interesting to see the difference two years makes. But these results are still valuable to me.

An Experience with Digital Natives

I had dinner last night with a friend who is fostering two children from Columbia for 6 weeks. The kids are 9 and 12. They do not speak English, and I speak very little Spanish, so communication was a challenge. About halfway through dinner, I reached in my purse for my iPhone and felt them watching me. They knew exactly what it was and asked their foster mom if I would let them play with it. That was it for the rest of the meal. I was amazed at their ability to instinctively use it, and my hand was even pushed away when I tried to show them how to "bowl." They'd never played the game before, but they knew exactly how it worked. It was cool.

More App pictures

Creating an Intercom App Prototype using OmniGraffle

Success! I have started building my prototype using the stencil program OmniGraffle. I don't have the authority (or developer chops) to make a "real" Intercom app, so I thought I could design a prototype that shows the potential of the mobile mag instead (Rich, do let me know if this is OK!). I've started with a front page that lists the topics of interest:

Next I plan to create the sublevels with the ability to communicate/participate with authors/editors/office staff/other readers. I've also been thinking about Rich's question about the mobility of the device through GPS, and I hope to incorporate that into the design as well. Anyway, it's exciting to have something to look at!

App Update

This week has been hell for me workload-wise, so I'm behind with my app development, but I plan to use a template source for testing my app idea because, like Arthur, I am no developer.

I've found some interesting stencils, some I shared last week during class:
http://graffletopia.com/stencils/413
http://iphoneized.com/2009/03/roundup-iphone-stencils-graphics-templates/
http://www.designcommission.com/shop/iphone-stencil-kit/

Others I've recently found these templates: http://pineappleiphone.com/themes/free-iphone-templates/

Since I'm focusing on a blog or forum format, something like these Blogger or WordPress templates might work. I need to do what Arthur and Julie have done and organize my content. You might even see a paper prototype first!... Feels like usability.

Interviews re: possible Intercom magazine app

So the iPhone app I'm attempting to build is for the magazine Intercom. As you can see from the website, the current system is old and old-fashioned (we're using PDFs of articles). But this is a magazine for TCers, so it seems reasonable for many of them (readers are mostly STC members) to want a mobile version. I was curious to find out what readers think of the idea, how they might use it, and what it would need to have, and I gathered the following feedback:

• "I love the print version and do not want it online or in a mobile device. And what happens when the next technology comes along? We have to do that, too?"
• "I'd rather see it for Amazon Kindle. The screen size is more suited to the current layout."
• "As a social media tool about topics presented in the mag, it would work. But not as a reproduction of the print version."
  
• "I'd like to see a text-only version of the magazine. IMO, it's currently too graphic-intensive, and I'm not sure those graphics would work, or even be necessary, on a mobile device."
• "What is the benefit to encourage members to use such a program? To be cool?"
• "For me, a paper copy is more portable. I don't own a PDA, a smartphone, a Kindle, or anything like that, so viewing the magazine means I have to be sitting in front of my computer. And I admit, I just like paper. I like printed books and paper magazines and all that. Reading Intercom online was inconvenient because you had to open up a dozen separate PDF files. Now that each issue is available as a single PDF, I've long since gotten out of the habit of reading it, unfortunately."
• "Print layouts are far more labor-intensive than online, HTML-based publications. Yes, I would like to see it online-only with no PDF option, and an app could supplement that. Laying out a publication in InDesign takes eons longer than posting an article in HTML.
  Of course, printed magazines are prettier than HTML. That's the other side of the issue."
• "I'm concerned about readability and accessibility. I don't 'read' on the computer or a phone. I use these devices to search for information. I read articles in hard copy and I keep periodicals as a personal library."
• "I think it is important not to get so enthralled by new technologies that we fail to support the old technologies that are still in demand."
• "I like my printed version of Intercom, but I also like the idea of putting it online and making it interactive, expanding it to include content beyond what's available in the printed version, and publishing information on and about emerging technologies faster."
• "In an app, I'd like to be able to link from a blog post or a forum directly to an article. A pdf would be laborious."
• "How will you restrict access to members-only with an app?"
• "You really should post individual articles as blogs. This gives the author more exposure and can give the STC more traffic via trackbacks from other TC folks who blog."
• "We really need to leverage these kinds of "Web 2.0" technologies. We should publish articles, op/ed pieces, even research pieces as blogs; this leverages the blog platform and invites everyone to participate. This opens up the "social media" aspect of the web to the Society."

These comments all have me thinking that a magazine app could function more like an open-access blog or forum or a searching device, where people could go to discuss articles, maybe with a link back to the magazine articles on the web. But the PDFs still need help that I'm not sure an app solves, only supplements.

Still working this out in my mind, and the feedback is enormously helpful....

Digital Natives and Privacy

I'm reading three related books at the same time:

1. Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser
2. Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott
3. The Broken Window by Jeffery Deaver

It's an interesting mixture of reading. All of the books discuss the privacy concerns for "anyone who leads a life mediated ... by digital technologies" (Palfrey and Gasser, 61). No laws for managing digital data currently protect us sufficiently. And Deaver's crime novel, though fiction, is scary because the scenario seems increasingly possible.

I was curious about this idea of the broken window in relation to identity theft, so I searched and found this Wikipedia entry:

"The parable of the broken window was created by Frédéric Bastiat in his 1850 essay Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas (That Which Is Seen and That Which Is Unseen) to illuminate the notion of hidden costs associated with destroying property of others. Bastiat uses this story to introduce a concept he calls the broken window fallacy, which is related to the law of unintended consequences, in that both involve an incomplete accounting for the consequences of an action. Economists of the Austrian School frequently cite this fallacy, and Henry Hazlitt devoted to it his book Economics in One Lesson."

The hidden costs for digital natives is definitely their privacy and the possibility for rampant identity theft.